Fiber optic connectors of a wide variety of designs have been employed to terminate optical fiber cables and to facilitate connection of the cables to other cables or other optical fiber transmission devices. A typical fiber optic connector includes a ferrule which mounts and centers an optical fiber or fibers within the connector. The ferrule may be fabricated of such material as ceramic. A ferrule holder or other housing component of the connector embraces the ferrule and may be fabricated of such material as molded plastic. A spring may be disposed within the housing or ferrule holder such that the ferrule is yieldably biased forwardly for engaging another fiber-mounting ferrule of a mating connector device.
A pair of fiber optic connectors or a connector and another optical fiber transmission device often are mated in an adapter which centers the fibers to provide low insertion losses. The adapter couples the connectors together so that their encapsulated fibers connector end-to-end. The adapter may be an in-line component, or the adapter can be designed for mounting in an opening in a panel, backplane, circuit board or the like.
Various problems continue to be encountered in designing fiber optic connector assemblies or other connector assemblies, including applications involving backplanes, motherboards, daughterboards and the like. U.S. Pat. No. 6,361,218, dated Mar. 26, 2002, which is assigned to the assignee of the present invention and which is incorporated herein by reference, shows a fiber optic connector module which is a very simple design and solves some of the problems of the prior art. However, problems still exist in aligning the ferrules of mating fiber optic connectors in adapters or other fiber optic connector devices. Specifically, if a fiber optic connector module is tilted or skewed within its fiber optic connector, even to a small extent, the ferrule which is fixed within the module will tilt or skew therewith. Therefore, the flat mating face at the front end of the ferrule will be at an angle to the flat mating face of the ferrule of the mating connector, and transmission losses may occur. The present invention is directed to solving these problems by allowing the ferrule to tilt relative to the module housing and, thereby, maintain a flush front face abutment of the ferrule with the ferrule of the mating connector.